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Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord will forgive me for interrupting him. I find it difficult to do so because I agree with everything he has said and would
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Lord Rea: I am extremely sorry for the way in which the tenor of my thoughts moved. It was well beyond my script, and I apologise to the Minister.
I have spoken mainly about the effect of post-conflict residual weapons.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My noble friend misunderstands the situation. The Companion to the Standing Orders is clear that if he cannot stay until the end of the debate, he should not speak in it. He has begun his remarks, but the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has made a plea, which I think is shared by all Members of this House, that he really ought to bring those remarks to a close. The Government are not replying to the debate. The Bill is in the hands of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, but he is under no obligation whatever to take any notice of what my noble friend says when he will not be present at the conclusion of the debate.
Lord Rea: I will, in that case, conclude my remarks. I strongly support my noble friend’s Bill. I hope that the Government will give it very careful and sympathetic consideration as it passes through its stages in this House and, more crucially, in another place.
12.06 pm
Lord Jay of Ewelme: I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on bringing forward this Bill. It is impossible not to be impressed by the particular horror of cluster bombs and their appalling effect on civilians, particularly women and children, not only when they are dropped but long afterwards, as we are still seeing in Vietnam and as I fear we will see for some time in the Lebanon. The issue in question is the consequences of the munitions that are used, not the intent behind their use, so the parallel that others have drawn with landmines is indeed valid.
It is impossible not to be struck by the sheer scale of the stockpile of cluster munitions and by their use and proliferation. Their use by Hezbollah, as others have mentioned, is a chilling reminder of this. I do not doubt for a moment that our Armed Forces will use these weapons professionally, responsibly and legally, as they use others; nor do I doubt that the weapons themselves are legal. But others, alas, will not be so scrupulous, with devastating humanitarian consequences for many.
Public attitudes to weapons evolve over time, as does the international law that governs their use, as we have seen over the last 150 years or so with dum-dum bullets in the 19th century through to
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I also welcome the focus of the recent CCW review conference, at British instigation, on the humanitarian consequences of cluster munitions. Those must be moves in the right direction, but we must ask whether they go far enough and whether there is not now, as other noble Lords have argued, a compelling humanitarian case for stronger action, particularly given the clear and continuing evolution of national and international opinion. There are now very strong arguments for getting ahead of the curve and working for a complete ban on cluster munitions, as proposed in the Bill.
I realise that this presents difficulties. We cannot ignore the Minister of State’s recent statement in another place that,
- “a total ban on the use of all types of sub-munition would have an adverse impact on the UK’s operational effectiveness”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/11/06; col. 802.]
The question is whether that adverse impact, and in particular the potential impact on the security of our Armed Forces, which must always be our top concern, is so great and so certain as to outweigh the inevitable humanitarian consequences of the continued use of cluster munitions. I look forward to the remarks to be made by the noble Lord, Lord Garden, and I was deeply impressed on that point by the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. For my part, like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, I am not yet convinced that the operational need for these weapons outweighs their inevitable humanitarian cost.
If we adjust our approach further, as I hope, and work for a complete ban as advocated in this Bill, whether through the CCW or separately, we should not underestimate the influence that we would have in the ensuing negotiations. Despite what we sometimes read, Britain has real influence in the world, including in the UN and other international bodies. That influence is derived from our economic strength, our global foreign policy, the high reputation of our Armed Forces, our large and poverty-focused aid programme, our long tradition of tolerance and our humane concern for others.
These issues are never straightforward, but I believe that the balance of the arguments now is in favour of this country putting its considerable political, moral and diplomatic weight behind those working for a complete ban on cluster munitions and making a real difference on an issue of huge and growing humanitarian concern, which is why I support this Bill.
12.11 pm
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for bringing this debate to your Lordships’ Chamber. I wish to associate myself strongly with the clear and
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“We consider that cluster munitions are lawful weapons when used in accordance with international humanitarian law”.
He went on to define how they might be properly used and be of military force and might.
This poses at once the question of whether we are going to base our use of any weapons on what is lawful or on what is right. As in other areas of debate—for example, bioethics—does a “can” automatically imply an “ought”? I believe that military action is justified and that our Armed Forces do an amazing job. We have a common duty to keep the peace, to protect the innocent and to minimise oppression, which is a duty that we all seek to support. But in pursuing those goals, we must surely be governed not by just what is legal, but by what is right.
In considering what arms we should use, I believe that we need to differentiate fairly clearly between those that are focused or targeted weapons—guns, bombs and missiles—that can be used against a defined military target and those indiscriminate weapons, such as chemical weapons, gas, nuclear weapons and cluster bombs, that affect civilian populations and areas as a whole. It is an increasingly easy distinction to make. Although there will be arguments about the boundaries, there cannot surely in your Lordships’ House be any doubt on which side of that divide cluster munitions fall. Why do we need to be so clear about the kind of weapons? Because the use of force in any “just war” theory means proportional response. Can cluster bombs ever be a proportional response?
When war spills out from the battlefield with conventional armed forces opposing each other, such as was envisaged by theorists like von Clausewitz, into the soft sweep of violence which affects whole civilian populations as well as military forces, we need much more sharply targeted weapons, not more indiscriminate ones. I have no hesitation in supporting the noble Lord in this debate. I hope very much that a definition of weapons and how they can be used proportionally will form part of the way we think through these questions, as this issue, which seems to me so self-evident and clear, is taken on to its next stage.
12.15 pm
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I commend the action of my noble friend in introducing this Bill to outlaw the use of cluster munitions. He has already explained what those weapons do. They are clearly anti-personnel weapons, designed to kill and injure individuals. They constitute a threat even after the conflict in which they were used has terminated. They are particularly dangerous to children, who are often attracted to them because of their colour. Children can be badly injured or even killed when they pick them up.
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Before the Iraq war, when it was clear that the invasion was about to begin, a number of us—notably the noble Lord, Lord Elton—urged the Government not to use cluster bombs. The danger to children was stressed. The Government refused to give such an assurance: indeed, whenever the subject has been raised, they have always said that cluster bombs are needed as a protection for our troops. I have always found this a rather surprising claim, which I hope will not be advanced again today.
I well recall the Kosovo conflict, which was claimed to be a conflict entered into for humanitarian reasons—to prevent ethnic cleansing. Some of us queried that at the time, since the casualties resulting from the intensive bombing were mainly civilians, and cluster bombs were used. Why were they used, if their use is required to protect troops? In that conflict, we did not have any troops on the ground. The war was conducted entirely by the bombing fleets. There were no troops to protect. Clinton refused to commit ground troops and we followed suit. There were no NATO troops on the ground until the hostilities were over, but we used cluster bombs notably on the city of Nis and other urban areas. The killed and injured were civilians and there were no military reasons for the use of those cluster weapons.
I cannot help believing that the function of these weapons is to terrorise civilian populations and to continue to make their lives difficult when the conflict is over. As we have heard today, fields cannot be farmed and villages often cannot be used because of the dangers that the weapons left behind represent. I hope we all agree that this is unacceptable and that the Bill receives the support it deserves. I also hope that we will be told by the Government about action being taken to assist civilians in the areas where there has been conflict and where they are still facing the problems left by these weapons. I support this Bill.
12.18 pm
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as a serving TA officer. Indeed, my commanding officer commanded an MLRS battery that was designed to fire these weapons. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for introducing this important subject by means of a Private Member’s Bill. I have been coming under considerable pressure from a personal contact in the UNHCR, resulting from the indiscriminate use of these weapons in southern Lebanon, as described by many noble Lords.
While cluster weapons are nasty weapons, there is no such thing as a nice lethal weapon. They can all kill, they can all maim, and they can all destroy the hopes and dreams of their victims, but I am not convinced that our Prime Minister understands that. Even the humble AK47 creates misery and fear all over the world. I have only one question, but it is a little technical. Does our current inventory of cluster munitions comply with the requirements of “insensitive munitions”?
Until recently, I slightly misunderstood the problem. For instance, it is thought that submunitions in Lebanon failed to explode because they were out of
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The M26 MLRS rockets contain 644 M77 submunitions. After a short flight, the submunition is armed by a simple mechanism and when it hits a hard target it explodes. The hard target may be an armoured vehicle but if it hits any other hard surface—a rock or a vehicle—it will still explode. The problem, as identified by many noble Lords, is that if it gets stuck in a tree, lands in sand or lands in snow it will probably not explode. As there is no self-destruct facility—or, if there is one, it is unreliable—the submunition remains dangerous for a long time and, because the fuse mechanism is simple, it is very easy to set off. This causes all the problems so accurately described by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, of course, is infinitely more knowledgeable about military matters than I am and he has described his difficulties with and reservations about cluster munitions.
As noble Lords have pointed out, the UK did not deploy MLRS on Operation TELIC in Iraq in 2003. I was there. Of course, the reason we did not do so was because we had absolute air superiority. We could attrit the enemy by air and we did not want to litter the battlefield with any more unexploded ordnance than necessary for the reasons outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.
Many noble Lords have remarked on our use of other cluster munitions in Iraq in 2003. I was one of the 25,000 British servicemen on the ground. If we had lost more than 1,000 British servicemen on that operation, I suggest your Lordships would be taking a rather different view. We believed that we faced weapons of mass destruction. We fought to win, not to lose. Do not send our Armed Forces on operations like this with one hand tied behind their back. If noble Lords do not like the consequences of an illegal and unnecessary war, I suggest they have a chat with the Prime Minister.
Why the Israel Defense Forces acted in Lebanon in the way they did is a mystery to me. What desired end-state could it have been seeking to achieve? I think part of their problem must have been poor command and control arrangements.
Many noble Lords have questioned the utility of cluster munitions. It has been suggested that the bomblets are ineffective against the main battle tanks’ armour, especially if the tank has explosive-reactive armour. But, first, there are thousands of main battle tanks without ERA; and secondly, an armoured force has many more armoured vehicles than main battle tanks. In addition, it will have vast numbers of soft-skinned vehicles. Armoured personnel carriers are designed to resist small-arms fire and shrapnel from bombardment but, unless they are something like our in-service Warrior armoured personnel carrier, they are not designed to resist shaped charges. For instance, our most numerous armoured fighting vehicles are in the FV 430 range, which are easily
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Noble Lords have observed that some countries have, to some extent, withdrawn cluster munitions or are debating doing so. But, to be quite blunt, many of these countries do not plan to prosecute and win a large-scale, high-intensity conflict. It is our Government’s policy to be able to do so. I suggest that those countries rely upon the US, UK and, possibly, France to do that task for them. Most of these states do not have a comprehensive and layered defence capability; their forces are unbalanced. I believe that there are 10,000 main battle tanks in Europe but states with far more main battle tanks than ourselves spend only a fraction of the UK’s defence expenditure. They have horrible gaps in their capability, particularly in logistics, their ability to deploy at distance, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance. In short, they are not serious and their conventional deterrent is weak. I believe that we need this capability to engage an advancing enemy armoured formation.
Noble Lords have mentioned Kosovo, but in that campaign we saw the limitations of air power. Yes, a few platforms were taken out, but the Serb forces were much better than expected in camouflage, concealment and deception. Why we were deceived is another matter. We make a mistake by always assuming that we will have air superiority in a future conflict. Certainly that might be right in respect of a conflict of choice, but we might not have air superiority where an enemy has unexpectedly good air defences.
However, if we are to have a system of cluster munitions, we must exercise great care in its use in order to follow the doctrine of General Rupert Smith in his excellent book Utility of Force.
I am sorry to be unhelpful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, but I share all noble Lords’ concerns about unexploded submunitions—the ones that do not go off for the reasons I have explained. I believe that it is imperative that submunitions self-destruct quickly and reliably. This is for two reasons: first, on the humanitarian grounds already expertly laid out by noble Lords; and, secondly, for military effectiveness. The system would be much more effective if all submunitions exploded on contact with a hard surface or self-destructed within a few seconds. I cannot see any advantage in not having all submunitions exploding quickly after deployment. I think the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, would agree on that point.
Incidentally, I do not think that self-neutralisation is good enough because it would leave in place many of the problems I have outlined. There would be less military utility and it would provide a source of explosives for irregular forces or terrorists.
Cluster munitions present a unique problem. Ordinary high-explosive shells and propellant natures can be used up on live-firing exercises—no doubt there is a cycle in the use of defence munitions to achieve that end—but, because of their nature, cluster munitions cannot be fired for training. It would be interesting to know whether cluster munitions have been fired recently on an MRS.
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So what is to be done? I believe that the Bill as drafted is undesirable, but easily amendable to permit cluster munitions with reliable self-destruct mechanisms. In the short term, the Minister should consider controls on cluster munitions, particularly a requirement for a written authority from the Secretary of State to remove cluster munitions from the ammunition depots. In the longer term, the Minister should ensure that all submunitions should self-destruct reliably.
My fear—or, perhaps, forecast—as there are other uses for the MLRS launcher system, is that the Government will keep current stocks of cluster munitions for as long as possible until the political pressure becomes too much, and will then take the munitions out of service but will not replace them with munitions with a reliable self-destruct device because of the cost.
12.29 pm
Lord Berkeley: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Dubs on introducing the Bill. This is an appropriate day on which to debate it—buried among a lot of other news is news that the Government have instructed the Serious Fraud Office to stop inquiring into sleaze in the arms industry. Cluster bombs are part of that. One reads of the huge sighs of relief from these people and that the decision has apparently been made in the national interest.
I frequently hear that we need arms to defend ourselves, and I do not disagree, but that if we can sell as many of them as possible to other people as well, the unit cost comes down and that is more efficient, so we should export them. We seem to do this, often with allegedly massive bribes, which might have come out in the SFO inquiry if it had continued, on the basis that everybody else does it and we have to keep up with them or lose jobs. The key is not to get found out, hence the panic in much of the world over the SFO inquiry. This has been going on for years. The Conservative Party did it when it was in government. We should give our Government credit for starting the SFO inquiry—I am rather sad that they have not been able to keep it going.
In today’s world, few of these arms are for defending the UK, and I include cluster bombs in that remark. They seem to be more frequently used for attacking others such as expeditionary forces around the world and, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, suggested, for other things as well. So it is good that landmines are already banned, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said; that has been confirmed by Hilary Benn. Cluster bombs are not any different in their effect from landmines; they are just a different means of delivery, which I am sure some of our colleagues will say is more efficient. As many noble Lords have said, these things stay around for years and kill many innocent people.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry talked about collateral damage. Probably more than 100,000 people have died in Iraq but we do not seem to be able to count them. If al-Qaeda or anybody else managed to set off some of these bombs in our suburban gardens, covering large parts of the UK with mines that hung around for years, killing our
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